That (stunning) time The Chronicle gave real estate to...

1of2The winner of the grand prize, a $15,000 house in Jordan Park in the Richmond District, was Lucy Hawthorne, who collected her largesse on her 19th birthday. The house is gone now, replaced by apartments.Photo: Chronicle archives

2of2Photo: Chronicle archives

Imagine, if you can, a Bay Area real estate market that’s relaxed to the point where property in San Francisco, San Carlos, Mill Valley and Piedmont could be handed out like free tote bags.

That is precisely what happened in 1911, when The Chronicle gave away what now is more than $100 million worth of Bay Area real estate to men, women and many children who turned in newspaper subscription cards.

“The ‘Chronicle’ has announced a subscription promotion campaign of unparalleled liberality,” read a March 14, 1911, article. “The prizes are the most numerous and the most valuable that have ever been offered by any newspaper in the world.”

Turns out, that was not an overstatement.

The Chronicle has given away many memorable offers in its 153-year history; in 1887 the newspaper sent readers Winchester hunting rifles and double-action revolvers.

But details of this contest are particularly hard to comprehend, and honestly a little painful to read for anyone living in the Bay Area in 2019 — when some suburban communities have a minimum $1 million entry price for a small home.

The Chronicle gave away 57 properties in more than two dozen Bay Area communities, plus an entire city block in Montara. In some cases, including in Santa Rosa and Walnut Creek, ranches and multi-acre lots were handed out in areas that now contain several homes.

The grand prize was a two-story house and lot on the corner of Euclid and Parker avenues in San Francisco’s Jordan Park neighborhood, valued at $15,000. The Chronicle advertised that the entire contest was worth $110,000.

“There is a vast number of other desirable things to be won,” The Chronicle announced. “Plenty of lots, valuable building sites, a Baker electric, prizes in gold and automobiles, pianos, chests of handsome silver, diamonds and a variety of other prizes.”

The 1911 contest was rediscovered and shared on social media this month by reader Sue Trowbridge, who was online perusing back issues of The Chronicle. Stunningly, some of the most expensive real estate in today’s dollars was listed as among the least valuable prizes in the contest.

A trout fisherman’s outfit ($150) was valued the same as a riverside lot near Healdsburg ($150), where property now starts at $800,000.

A Mountain View property on Mountain View Avenue near Mercy Street ($250) was valued approximately the same as a chest of sterling silver knives, forks and spoons ($245). Recent comparative listings show the value of a small house on the same block of Mountain View Avenue falls between $1.7 million and $2 million in 2019.

In the contest, Chronicle readers had three months to sell subscriptions, getting points for gathering new subscribers, or mailing in coupons with point values in the newspaper. The Chronicle kept track of who was selling the most subscriptions and let the biggest sellers receive the first pick in the prizes. After the Jordan Park home, a Baker electric automobile, Velie four-door automobile and two grand pianos were listed among the most valuable prizes.

Other properties included a lot on Channing Way in Burlingame near Bayswater Avenue; a Lakeshore Avenue lot in the Piedmont hills; a lot on Hawthorne Avenue in Larkspur, between Ward and King streets; and a beachside property in Inverness facing Tomales Bay.

The grand prize winner was San Francisco resident Lucy Hawthorne, who was photographed in front of the Jordan Park home in the Richmond District on her 19th birthday — making her instantly one of the most eligible bachelorettes in the city.

“That house and lot are going to remain single, and any proposals to marry the premises will be rejected,” she told The Chronicle on June 24, 1911. “I make this announcement now so that there may be no disappointed house-hunters.”

The Jordan Park house is gone now, replaced by apartments at some point in the decades that followed, but the legacy of the contest remains. Whether they know it or not, a few hundred Bay Area residents are living on property that was given away by The Chronicle for (practically) nothing.

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop culture critic and host of the podcast The Big Event. The Bay Area native has worked at The Chronicle since 2000, and was a Chronicle paperboy from 1982 to 1984. He reviews movies, television and comedy, covers entertainment, creates multimedia projects and writes the Our San Francisco local history column. The Big Event is recorded in The Chronicle’s basement archive. Hartlaub lives in Alameda.